Friday, December 31, 2010

The Best of 2010

The Best of 2010

It's that time again! Time to sum up my reading for 2010.

It's been an interesting year. While packing to move this spring, I set aside a stack of favorite books and did some rereading. The quandary is if I include them on the list for the best of the year, other new-to-me books will be left out, so to settle this dilemma I'm including a separate category of favorite books I've read again.

Top 10 of 2010:8. Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler

11. The Bay of Love and Sorrows by David Adams Richards

15. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

22. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

62. The Passage by Justin Cronin

64. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

71.- 72. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card,

85.- 88. Otherland Series by Tad Williams, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow , Otherland: River of Blue Fire, Otherland: Mountain of Black Glass, and Otherland: Sea of Silver Light

103. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

123. Room by Emma Donoghue

Top 3 Non-fiction:9. Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

42. Lucky by Alice Sebold

96. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally (based on fact)

All time favorite books I've read and read again, including this year:

27.- 30. The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring,The Two Towers,The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien35. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

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Book ratings

very highly recommended: highly recommendedrecommended so-sonot recommended did not finish

A "stuck overnight at the airport book" means this book will keep you up, awake, and entertained with minimum trips to find coffee or a distraction.

An "airplane book" rating means it is an engaging book that will hold your attention but you won't cry if you lose it or misplace it.

yearly book lists

John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

Orson Scott Card, in introduction to Ender's Game, pg. xxv

He Wishes For The Clothes Of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half-light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.